Seboni's love songs.... Part 2 (continued from last week)

MONKAGEDI GAOTLHOBOGWE
Correspondent | Friday February 16, 2007 00:00

While it caters for such occasions, one needs to approach the collection with an open mind so as to learn and be nourished by the poetry.  What is love and what is to love?
These are philosophical questions that, somewhere in the anthology, Seboni attempts to address. Love is selfless, he says in the poem titled Selfless. This poem is rich in meaning although it is one of Seboni's shortest poems in the anthology.

'I have to love myself selfishly before I can love you selflessly,' it goes.  He is simply saying the understanding of the meaning of loving someone should begin inside you, loving yourself.

 He points out that while he is not quoting from the Bible, even Jesus preached that love is the greatest commandment. Seboni's poem can also be compared to the Biblical commandment: Love your neighbour as you love yourself'.

In Flower, Seboni captures the magic of romantic love, that it can inspire someone to achieve great things. Seboni likens a lover to a flower that draws its energy from the sun. 'I sprout out of the musty earth and stretch towards my lover the sun, drawing me towards her face with the capture of her smile, embowered in her brilliant embrace, I transpire, I flower.'

Holding Hands and Baobab revisit parental love. Seboni's book also carry poems on love for mankind in general, as in the poem, Blackness, which he dedicated to Africans in the Diaspora. He once lived in America for four years after spending his early days in London where he experienced first hand the struggles of people of colour.

The poem Blackness is Seboni's longest piece in this book, covering two pages. In Black & White I and in Black & White II, Seboni preaches racial harmony, and peaceful coexistence between black and white races.  Seboni's universal love is also well captured in Healing.

 'In a world that yawns with deep chasms created by differences in age and gender, our love is the bridge that draws us together.'

In Love Is A Together Thing, he reiterates the concept of universal love and emphasizes that love must be shared. One poem, Sunflower, is specifically dedicated to women, as the poet admires the strength of a woman, her endurance, patience, and triumphs. '

Woman with the weight of the world on her head is like sunflower filled with seed and adorned with petals, bowing gently burdened by her beauty.

 Unswayed by passing winds she stays slim but strong capturing the sun in her golden face to flower again with seed'.

In the poem, AIDS, he cautions against HIV and AIDS. ' How cruel, these modern times... we make love in darkness and in the light a terrible new death is born'.

One cannot help but wonder at the style of writing that Seboni has adopted to produce this work of poetry. He uses free verse most of the time, and this style gives him that freedom to come up with amazing verses without the restrictions of rhymes. The result has been some punchy, intelligently woven lyrics.

Meantime, the author has clarified about the poem, For M, which last week was interpreted as promoting the concept of love at first sight. Seboni says that although the poem talks about 'words unsaid and promises never made', it is about passion between two people who know each other intimately. He says he wrote the poem for a girlfriend of his when he was about 20 years old.

'I was a young person of course, that explains why it is full of youthful energy.  It would be in appropriate to suggest that the poem promotes free sex, especially in this era of HIV and AIDS,' elaborated the author.